Hardware Review

TouchStream LP

The first keyboard I ever connected to a Macintosh was the Apple Adjustable
Keyboard, back in 1993. Little did I suppose that it would prove to be one of
the more conventional keyboards I would use over the years. In my time with
ATPM, I’ve reviewed the Kinesis Advantage Pro and the even stranger Datahand
Professional II, but oddly enough I
never reviewed the keyboard that I have been using regularly for the last eight
years: the FingerWorks TouchStream LP.

Let me be up front about this: the TouchStream is no longer being made.
FingerWorks stopped selling it (along with all its other products) in 2005, when
Apple bought the company. Occasionally a used one will come up on eBay or
elsewhere; expect to pay at least double the retail price cited above. If you
have a TouchStream that needs help, the fingerfans forum is the best place to find
support.

Though the TouchStream was never more than a niche product (with, as is often
the case, a small but enduring following), its descendants have risen to
world-wide fame. So in this final issue of a great but never enormously popular
publication, I’d like to pay tribute to a great piece of technology, one which
is still very much in my present, and which in a way is in all of our presents
and futures as well.

TouchBoard

Taking the term literally, keyboard is not the right word for the TouchStream:
it hasn’t any keys at all. Rather, the TouchStream is a pair of the largest
trackpads you’ve ever seen, each with half a keyboard’s worth of “keys” drawn on
in straight columns (like the Kinesis Advantage Pro). The trackpads are
connected with a very short, very wide cable, at a slight angle; the distance
and angle of separation are not adjustable. They rest on a metal frame with
comfortable wrist-rests and a slight tenting bend in the middle, allowing typing
hands to be held in a more natural position than the traditional palms close,
parallel, and flat down.

While the angles from which the typist’s hands approach the TouchStream help
make typing more comfortable, the touchboard’s greatest ergonomic advantage
comes from the absense of keys: typing is not merely low-impact but zero impact.
However lightly I care to touch a letter, the touch activates it. Go ahead and
try it: hold your hands at your keyboard in typing position, but merely touch
the keys, without depressing them. Imagine typing like that all the time. It
makes a real difference.

Well wait a minute, doesn’t sensitivity like that kind of become a disadvantage?
What if my hands get tired and I want to rest my fingers on the keyboard, I
don’t want a long steam of random gibberish invading my document. Not a problem;
the TouchStream is smart. If you rest your fingers, it rests too.

Another common objection to the TouchStream’s design is that it offers no
tactile feedback. This isn’t just important for knowing when a key is activated,
but also for knowing where the keys are without looking, and for keeping fingers
oriented during a long typing session. Indeed, when I type I look at the screen,
so I have to rely entirely on muscle-memory to know where to tap for each
letter. Even with years of practice, I make mistakes. But again, the TouchStream
is smart: if I’m a little bit off, it can usually figure out what I mean. It
uses an English-language dictionary to make educated guesses when I touch
between one key and another, sometimes even backspacing to correct a bad guess
as I continue typing a word. (Which looks strange, but I’ve gotten used to it.)
Typing non-words is still possible, of course, but can require slightly more
careful aim to avoid being corrected: the TouchStream has many times settled a
draw between O and P by directing me to atom.com.) Overall it’s fair to say I
can’t type as quickly on a TouchStream as I could on a good quality keyboard
with tactile feedback, but I don’t mind trading a little speed for comfort and
other advantages.

Trackpad

If zero-impact and clever compensation for not having keys were the only magic
in this cat’s bag of tricks, the TouchStream would be an awfully hard sell (even
if it were still on sale). But when I said it’s made of two trackpads I wasn’t
merely making an analogy. One of the TouchStream’s halves (the right by default)
doubles as a mouse. Dragging two fingers together—right over the “keys”—moves
the mouse pointer. Add a third finger to move the pointer with the mouse button
down (to select a group of icons, for example). Drag four fingers to scroll. And
of course tap two fingers to click (or three to double-click).

Yes, the other side of the TouchStream does something too: it moves the cursor.
Two fingers work like very fast, precise arrow keys; just as with the mouse
pointer, add a third finger to select as you go. I had to look up what four
fingers do (yes, I still have all the original documentation): Home and End,
Page Up and Down. Though there are dedicated arrow keys I almost never use them,
much preferring their gestural equivalents.

In practice, I do keep yet another piece of long-outdated tech sitting on my
desk: a Kensington Expert Mouse Pro, which I use for the majority of my mousing.
But when I’m typing or editing a document I’ll often use the TouchStream for
navigation rather than reaching for the trackball. It just feels faster. The
presence and convenient locations of both Backspace and Delete keys also help
make the TouchStream an ideal keyboard for editing documents.

But navigation is just the tip of the iceberg. There are standard and intuitive
gestures for Cut/Copy/Paste and Zoom In/Out, for example, and
Forward/Back/Reload gestures for use when browsing the Web. Though these things
can also be done with a mouse or with standard keyboard shortcuts, gestures are
often the most comfortable and convenient way. Additional, more purpose-specific
gesture sets can be enabled on demand, e.g. for gaming or word processing. I’d
expect the latter to appeal to me but in practice they never took off: there is
no such thing, for example, as an intuitive gesture for italicizing something,
and that’s not something that I do often enough for muscle memory to learn
“swipe left thumb and first two fingers to the right.”

Favorites

Ah, but now I’m going to tell you about my favourite two features. I use them
frequently, every day, without even thinking about it; they are completely
natural. When typing on any other keyboard, I miss them terribly.

First, there is a gesture for closing windows. Thumb plus three fingers of the
right hand rotated clockwise a bit, pivoting roughly about the thumb. This
gesture is beautiful because it feels exactly like a dismissal, like I am
royalty waving away some trifling matter, like saying goodbye. Pfft, the window
is closed. I’ve long since forgotten the Open, Save, and New gestures, which do
not hold for me this graceful elegance.

Second, there is a chord for holding down Shift. What? Why? Look at the picture;
the TouchStream has Shift keys. They’re in the traditional spots, right where
your fingers expect them. Why on earth do you want an alternative for that? But
it is so fast and convenient: drop four fingers anywhere on either side, type a
letter. If I’m typing several capitals, some on each side, no problem: as long
as I hold some fingers down, I can release one as needed to get a capital on
that side. I never reach for the Shift keys.

What Endures

The winter before last, my TouchStream seemed to be showing the effects of age,
sometimes losing responsiveness altogether. Unplugging and reconnecting it
worked as a temporary fix, but I wished I had stocked up years ago when I had
the chance. That was when I found the fingerfans forum, and there, a firmware
update which I’d never known about or applied. I didn’t think it was likely to
help, but I gave it a try and it seemed to do some good (the problem may also
have been the terribly dry air we had around that time). At any rate, I can say
something about the TouchStream that usually can’t be evaluated in reviews: it
has impressive longevity.

Of course the best measure of the TouchStream’s longevity is not the life of its
body but that of its spirit. Its multi-touch technology, once available to the
general public only in obscure, niche devices, is now in regular use by millions
of iOS users, people to whom typing on a keyboard with no tactile feedback has
become commonplace.

Similarly, I hope not only that the articles and reviews on ATPM will remain
useful long after our site contains only back-issues, but also that our staff
members will go on to aid and influence our small cadre of loyal subscribers and
millions more who never heard of ATPM, as they begin or continue writing
elsewhere. Best wishes to all; it’s been a great ride.